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A Gastric Sleeve Helps Chef Matt Jennings Lose 200 Pounds

In a video on TODAY FOOD Chef Matt Jennings reveals that his doctor told him he had a choice to either “live or die.” Weighing over 400 pounds and suffering from ill health and anxiety, Matt chose to live. This meant he needed to lose weight — a lot of weight. He underwent a gastric sleeve surgery, which helped him lose 200 pounds and regain his health.

A gastric sleeve is a bariatric procedure that reduces the size of a patient’s stomach by 80% – 85%, leading to a sense of fullness much sooner, so a patient eats less and loses weight. A surgery like this may seem like a drastic option for losing weight, but Matt needed to lose drastic amounts of weight in order to manage his pre-diabetes, high cholesterol and related anxiety.

“I weighed about 405 pounds, and it was time to change my life,” says Matt in the TODAY FOOD video. He goes on to say that most people don’t understand that food can become an addiction. As a chef who tastes food for a living, Matt started putting on weight before he realized his addiction, and his size, had gotten out of control. He finally decided he had to get healthy for himself, his wife, and his kids.

Matt tried dieting and exercising as a first step, but wasn’t losing weight at the rate he wanted to — or needed to — for optimal health. After speaking with his doctor, Matt moved forward with a gastric sleeve surgery, which kick-started his weight loss more dramatically, giving him the boost he needed to change his lifestyle and turn things around.

“Getting a procedure like this enables you to change your life slowly,” states Matt. “Once I had the [gastric sleeve] procedure done, I recognized that I had an opportunity, and I had to seize it.”

And he did! Matt lost 200 pounds after the gastric bypass, and transitioned to eating 4-5 small meals per day with a focus on lean proteins, vegetables and some whole grains. Watch the video from TODAY FOOD to learn how Matt eats today, and how he flavors his food to make it tasty and satisfying.

“If you don’t like where you are at, all you have to do is start taking steps so you can change things…Once you’ve decided wellness — most importantly, feeling healthy — is of central importance in your life, then and only then will you make progress in physically changing your life,” Matt Jennings told TODAY.

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